I’ve always had a modest fascination with intranets. I don’t know exactly what it is. Perhaps it’s the idea that you can keep all your information online but it’s protected from the prying eyes of the rest of the web. Or maybe it’s because intranets often have useful information. I think this is related to the fact that an intranet is its own mini universe. Instead of the world wide web, it’s a company wide web. Whereas the web contains an infinite ocean of information the content of intranets is relatively accessible and discoverable.

I’ve always been a bit curious about how to set one up correctly. It seems that it might be easy to accidentally display the wrong information to the wrong group. Or worse, display the wrong information to the entire world. Configuring one is definitely a job for a competent IT person. Not all companies have the budget for top IT people, or they might have them occupied on other tasks. For this situation, there’s Papyrs. It’s an online intranet system that lets you organize and share information across multiple groups.

Papyrs main calling is to provide you with the tools to build a personalized intranet. You can create pages with their drag and drop editor to serve almost any purpose. This ranges from displaying important event or contact information, setting up forms to collect user feedback, to setting up forms to book conference rooms. It can all be done with their simple interface.

The WYSIWYG editor makes page creation easy. Just place the items you’d like on the page and move them around until it’s laid out to your liking. You can add text, images, checklists, Twitter feeds, forms, and file attachments. This covers just about all the things a company would like to do with their intranet system. On the backend you’re able to create reports and export data for offline processing if you like.

Papyrs is a tool to help people successfully collaborate on projects. The manager of the system can add people and grant them various levels of access to the pages of their intranet. The admin has full control of how the information is distributed and edited. On top of that, each team member is given a profile page where they can include contact information and personal bios.

Along with pages being set up are customized themes so you can mimic the look and feel of your corporate brand. This is a minor touch but helps build a sense of common purpose and goal.

Papyrs was recently launched and is currently being offered for free during their beta phase. No word on the pricing structure but they promise to continue to offer a free version in the future. It comes to us from a Dutch company named Stunf. We weren’t immediately able to verify the inspiration of their name, but they’re a small software company. Their specialty is project management and task planning applications. It’s fitting that they would add a team collaboration tool to their repertoire.

Setting up an intranet can be a time consuming and challenging task. Building the web pages for it can take a while as well. Papyrs gives you the tools to manage the entire intranet setup and building process. With it you can have your intranet online quickly so you can focus on your core business.